


Through The Unknown, Unremembered Gate

by Kate_Lear



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-07
Updated: 2011-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-22 08:12:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Lear/pseuds/Kate_Lear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anniversaries, in different eras and for different milestones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through The Unknown, Unremembered Gate

**Author's Note:**

> Just because I’ve recently realised, with surprise, that it’s already been a year since I started writing about the boys. It got me thinking about Holmes and Watson, and Sherlock and John, and anniversaries and, well, the result is below (unbetaed, since it’s so small). It’s for the lovely fandom friends I’ve made who’ve turned into real-life friends. You know who you are ;)
> 
> The title is taken from T. S. Eliot’s ‘[Little Gidding](http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/t__s__eliot/poems/15136)’, and there are references in here to [DEVI](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Devil%27s_Foot).
> 
>  **ETA:** Amazingly and brilliantly, this has now been translated into Chinese by qinwuxin1978, available [here](http://221dnet.211.30i.cn/bbs/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=1428).

I lay in the garden of our rented cottage and watched my cigarette smoke curl upwards. The sunset was turning the western horizon all manner of glorious colours, while in the velvety blue of the east the first stars were beginning to show.

Holmes and I reclined in the shade of an enormous lime tree; it gave off great clouds of delicate, refreshing perfume that I breathed in deeply, grateful for the contrast with the vile fumes of _Radix pedis diaboli_ that still seemed to linger in my throat. The windows of our sitting room had been wide open all afternoon and the place was now well and truly clear of the noxious stuff, but nonetheless Holmes and I still shied away from re-entering the house.

The case of the Devil’s foot root, as I privately termed it, had been a sad business, and it was not only traces of the poison that seemed to linger in the house but also the shadow of Dr. Sterndale’s grief, which resonated too closely with how I had felt in the aftermath of Holmes’ and my fateful trip to Switzerland.

I had never seen a man so hollowed out by sorrow, especially when he spoke about Miss Tregennis, and now I wondered whether I had looked like that. Small wonder that people had spoken to me so gently.

When I had believed Holmes dead at the foot of the Reichenbach Falls, I had often regretted the fact that there was no body, no mortal remains to which I could bid a last farewell. Now I was glad of it, for Dr. Sterndale’s face when he had spoken of the horror on the face of the woman he loved was terrible to behold. For all my grief at the time, at least I had been spared the ordeal of seeing Holmes’ sharp grey eyes closed, and his deft, quick hands forever stilled.

Holmes, who had doubtless guessed my thoughts, put his hand in my hair, and I turned my head to look at him.

‘It is a sorry affair,’ Holmes murmured, echoing my thoughts.

‘Yes.’

Holmes had also been shaken by the case and by his foolhardy experiment, although I was hardly less foolish for having agreed to it; my reckless desire to see the outcome had been more suited to a careless boy than a grown man. In any case, he had readily agreed to my suggestion of taking our supper in the garden rather than the malodorous sitting room, and we had spread a rug on the grass and sat there like two schoolboys.

Now we were both having a post-supper cigarette, enjoying the evening air and watching the stars come out in the gathering dusk. Holmes was leaning back against the tree trunk, my head pillowed in his lap, with one of his hands carding slowly through my hair. It was an indiscreet position, but after the ordeals of the day then we both needed the reassurance afforded by such contact, and there was no way anyone could access the back garden of the cottage without knocking at our front door.

I hated that such considerations had become second nature to me now, that I could not reach for Holmes without first considering my actions and who may be watching. But I hated still more the thought of Holmes coming to harm for loving me, and so I did it.

‘I’m not sure that you have very much to gain by writing about this affair, Watson,’ said the object of my thoughts, sounding very subdued.

‘Perhaps in time,’ I suggested gently. ‘With a few judicious alterations of identifying features…’

‘So much death,’ Holmes murmured, drawing on his cigarette and blowing the words out in a cloud of smoke, ‘and all for nothing.’

‘There was also love,’ I insisted, for Holmes’ constitution was still recovering from his recent period of overwork and I did not like the tone of his voice. ‘The lengths that a man will go to for his beloved. And justice, too. Obeying the spirit of the law rather than the letter.’

I hesitated, for I had rarely seen Holmes so moved by a case, before adding, ‘It was good of you to let Dr. Sterndale go.’

Holmes laughed humourlessly. ‘To do otherwise would have been grossest hypocrisy. I told you, Watson, that I would have done the same. Indeed, when I think about that ridiculous experiment to which I subjected us–’

‘Holmes, please, don’t.’ I began to sit up, wanting to hold him close, for there was an undercurrent of strong emotion in his voice that I had heard only rarely. But the strength of his grip on my shoulder stopped me, and he eased me back down.

‘No, Watson, don’t trouble yourself, I’m perfectly fine. But as I was saying, how could anyone see the man and not sympathise with him?’

I obeyed the hand that was coaxing me gently but firmly to lie back down, and Holmes began running his fingers through my hair once more. He was silent, his expression distant, and I knew that he was dwelling on thoughts that I would just as soon put behind us.

Desperate to turn his mind from the narrowly aborted consequences, I blurted, ‘I thought I saw you, in that room.’

‘And a dreadful fright I’m sure I looked.’

He tilted a sardonic eyebrow at me and I said, ‘No, I mean… Before all those dreadful visions started, I had a brief glimpse of a young man and I… I knew somehow that it was you, even though you looked nothing like yourself.’

‘I looked nothing like myself?’ he repeated back to me. His eyes were twinkling and he looked very much as though he was amused by my remark but I did not care, since it was at least better than the melancholy of a few moments ago. ‘Watson, I begin to think that reading Mr. Carroll’s nonsense story has had a greater effect on you than I thought.’

I narrowed my eyes at him, but my mock severity was belied by my smile at his amusement.

‘Very well,’ Holmes continued, deftly stealing the cigarette stub that I had been about to get up and dispose of, and crushing it carefully in the grass next to us. ‘If I looked nothing like myself, then how did you know it was me?’

I closed my eyes. He had extinguished his cigarette also, and his other hand had come to rest delicately on my temple. I took a moment to revel in the feeling of those beloved hands cradling my face before I replied, ‘You were shooting holes in the sitting room wall. I have always told you, Holmes, that pistol practice is–’

‘A distinctly open-air past-time,’ he finished, laughing a little. ‘Yes, I know. Well, that certainly seems conclusive.’

I opened my eyes to find that he was grinning down at me boyishly. ‘Do you know, my darling, I daresay that no other fellow lodger would have tried your patience quite so sorely as I have over all these years, nor put you at risk quite so frequently.’

‘I am sure of it,’ I answered, reaching up to take one of his hands and draw it to my lips for a kiss before settling it on my chest, clasped loosely in mine. ‘And I am equally sure that I would have been dreadfully bored. I would not have missed these years with you for anything, dear heart.’

It was by now almost dark, but there was still enough light for me to see him bite his lip and flush slightly with pleasure.

‘Do you realise,’ he mused gently, ‘that it has been sixteen years since Stamford first introduced us at Barts?’

‘Good Lord, is it really?’ I cast my mind back to our meeting, and was amazed to find that he was right. ‘I could have sworn that it was only eight or nine.’

‘Sixteen, I assure you.’ I looked up at him and brushed my hand over his face, running my fingertips over the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes, and noting the threads of silver that were now starting at his temples.

‘Even with all our adventures, it seems like only last year,’ I said softly.

‘Indeed.’ He leaned down and I leaned up, and our lips met in a kiss that managed to be slow and tender and sensuous all at once. ‘Let us hope for many more, eh Watson?’

I lay back down in his lap. The chill of the evening would soon start to bother my shoulder and we would go indoors, to retire to our bedroom and make love. Not with the fevered passion of the new lovers that we had once been, but slowly, tenderly, as befitted two men who knew each other’s bodies as well as their own. In another week we would return to London, and doubtless to a new case as well. Holmes would continue to enthral and charm and exasperate me as he always had and, I very much hoped, always would.

But for now we lingered in the sweetly fragrant dusk, while Holmes ran his fingers over my temples and through my hair and I spared one last thought for the wild-haired young man I had seen.

\----------

John keeps his eyes closed when he awakes, content for the moment just to breathe slowly and let the fragments of the dream unwind themselves from his mind. His sleeping world is often full of gunfire and shouting and blind terror, or else it’s a dark, dreamless place, but last night was different. Tangled memories of fog-hazy gaslight and the clatter of horses’ hooves, and a last fading impression of lying in cool grass, the stars above him brighter and more luminous than any he’d seen since Afghanistan.

Throughout it all there had been a man – tall, angular, and wearing a waistcoat and pocket-watch, which makes John wonder if the odd dream could have anything to do with the first edition of _Alice in Wonderland_ that had proved so crucial to the last case. He had curiously light eyes, and a square chin that lent an unexpected air of determination to a face that was otherwise aesthetically thin and pale.

He looks like no-one that John’s ever met. In the dream it had felt as though John knew him, as though that face was as familiar to him as his own, but now his mental image of the man is fading fast, like a pavement chalk sketch in the rain. More resilient is John’s memory of how he had felt in the dream: loved. _Adored_ , even; secure in the knowledge that he was treasured silently but constantly through years and across miles. John can’t remember the last time that he felt so cherished and he indulges himself for a while, burrowing into the warmth and softness of his pillow and trying to recapture the intensity of feeling for a few more minutes before the real world intrudes.

The other side of the bed is empty, but the lingering heat tells him that Sherlock hasn’t been gone long. Gradually John becomes aware of the sound of him clattering around in the next room, not being deliberately loud but not making any particular effort to be quiet either. This, John knows from past arguments about flat rules and consideration, means that it’s a decent hour and hence it’s time that he was up and about, even though he doesn’t have work today.

John drags his eyes open and squints at the wall in front of him. He doesn’t want to turn over just yet, since Sherlock’s idea of interior decorating is to wallpaper his room with the perpetrators of the most horrific crimes of the last hundred years, and John doesn’t quite feel up to facing them. There’s a muffled bang in the kitchen and he groans, steeling himself to roll out of bed and find out what Sherlock’s doing, but before he can move he hears Sherlock come into the bedroom.

Sherlock sets something down on the bedside table with a muted tap, and then John hears a soft susurrus of fabric and the blue dressing gown lands across the foot of the bed before Sherlock climbs back under the duvet. John closes his eyes again and smiles in sleepy pleasure. The mattress dips as Sherlock slides closer to him and John leans back slightly, wanting to feel Sherlock curled against him, but the next instant his smile vanishes in a pained yelp as icy feet wedge themselves between his calves and cold fingers burrow under his T-shirt.

‘Oh, you’re _warm_ ,’ Sherlock sighs in bliss, pressing himself closer to John, who squirms.

‘And you’re freezing!’ John complains, but when Sherlock tenses and makes to withdraw he catches Sherlock’s hand and presses it firmly against the skin of his stomach, even as his muscles tighten in mute protest.

‘You can’t have been gone that long,’ he grumbles, chafing Sherlock’s forearm, ‘ _how_ is it possible for you to be this bloody cold?’

‘It’s January,’ Sherlock rumbles, his nose a cool spot where it’s tucked in the hair at John’s nape.

‘Yeah, and you’ve got crap circulation.’

‘The _thirtieth_ of January, to be precise.’

John pauses from rubbing his calves together in an attempt to warm Sherlock’s feet. Sherlock’s hand is very careful and still on his stomach, not tracing delicate, ticklish patterns as he usually does, and the tone of his voice is… odd. A little triumphant, and a little playful, but also more than a little uncertain. Something warm expands in John’s chest, and he recommences smoothing his hand along the lean muscles of Sherlock’s forearm as he hums in agreement, adding, ‘I was at the clinic all day yesterday, signing prescriptions with the twenty-ninth so yes, today is definitely the thirtieth. And?’

When Sherlock doesn’t reply, John reaches back to prod him, earning himself an exclamation and a squirm.

‘What of it?’ John asks, not making any attempt to hide the amusement that he knows Sherlock can hear in his voice.

Sherlock, when he answers, sounds slightly pained. ‘You’re not going to make me actually _say_ it, are you?’

John laughs aloud, clasping Sherlock’s hand and bringing it up to kiss the backs of his fingers – they look fine to a casual inspection, and John knows that Sherlock doesn’t have any biologically hazardous experiments on the go. ‘All right, I won’t. To tell you the truth, I’m a bit surprised you remembered. Didn’t think it was the sort of thing you’d have made a note of.’

There’s a disdainful huff against the back of John’s neck, and to forestall the argument he can sense in the offing, he asks, suddenly shy: ‘So… d’you want to… I don’t know… do anything in particular today?’

‘Yes,’ Sherlock says promptly, and John’s eyebrows lift in involuntary surprise. ‘I’ve made you a cup of tea for breakfast–’

John rolls his eyes, unseen. Of course Sherlock wouldn’t cook, even today.

‘–and then I’m taking you for a walk in the park–’

‘Sherlock! Christ, do we have to? The weather forecast was rotten for today, and if all I’m allowed for breakfast is a cup of tea–’

‘–then I’m taking you to lunch at the Criterion, so wear something smart.’

John blinks, momentarily silenced.

‘I see,’ he manages. Once, soon enough after his return from Afghanistan that non-Army food still seemed like a luxury, he’d walked past the restaurant and stopped to read the menu. His beans on toast that night hadn’t seemed nearly so appealing afterwards. ‘Er, right. Yes. Wow, thanks, that sounds really–’

‘Afterwards,’ Sherlock continues, and John can feel him shifting restlessly on the bed as though impatient to be up and about, ‘Mycroft will kidnap you, and I have to–’

‘Hang on, Mycroft will _kidnap_ me?’

Sherlock sighs deeply, and John can almost _feel_ the effort it costs him to keep his reply civil. ‘Come now, John. It’s been a year to the day, and you know that Mycroft always keeps track of important occasions. Of course he’ll want a word.’

‘Of course,’ John echoes, wondering at precisely what point his life took a left turn into such peculiar territory and, more importantly, when he stopped _minding_.

‘When you’re done then tell his assistant, whatever she’s calling herself today, to drop you at Barts. I’ve got an experiment I need to do in the morgue. Sorry, I usually wouldn’t, but Molly’s just texted me. There’s a fresh one in, just this morning.’

Sherlock sounds positively _lascivious_ at the idea, and John wrinkles his nose in distaste. ‘Can’t I just come back to the flat? I’m sure I don’t need to see this.’

‘I thought you might find it interesting. And besides,’ Sherlock’s hand drifts down to fiddle with the drawstring on John’s pyjama pants, and his voice drips with temptation as he says, ‘I might be using the riding crop.’

‘I knew I was going to regret telling you how much I liked seeing you with that thing,’ John grumbles as his face heats, but it’s only a half-hearted grumble. Last month’s discovery of just how good Sherlock looked striding around flourishing said crop masterfully had been as surprising (since John had never previously had any leanings in that direction) as it was intense (the memory makes John blush even several weeks later).

‘Then back to the flat. Or we could always text Lestrade, to see if there’s anything–’

‘No. Not today,’ John says firmly.

‘All right then. Something else in the afternoon. But it’ll have to be something to burn off energy and work up an appetite,’ (Sherlock’s fingers slide briefly underneath the waistband of John’s pyjamas, and John knows exactly what he’s thinking) ‘because we’re going to Angelo’s for dinner.’

John waits to see if this is everything and, apparently, it is.

‘That all sounds great,’ he says, grinning helplessly, and Sherlock purrs into his hair.

‘I thought you might approve.’

‘I do. It’s really… well, it’s really lovely, Sherlock. I didn’t know you cared that much.’

Sherlock hums into the back of his neck. ‘Well, I don’t, really, but I’ve not had pasta in a while and I – ow!’

He grabs at John’s finger, prodding a reprimand against the sensitive skin on his ribs, as John says, ‘As long as I don’t have to shoot any serial killers for you.’

‘Not unless you’re particularly in the mood for it. Are you _sure_ I can’t text Lest–’

‘Quite sure.’

With the tricky conversation successfully negotiated, Sherlock nuzzles into John’s neck and smoothes his hand up and down John’s stomach. John is all in favour of this but he has to ask: ‘No meeting with Mike Stamford, then?’

Sherlock grunts a ‘No,’ against his shoulder, adding, ‘I already sent him flowers.’

John laughs, disbelieving. ‘You’re pulling my leg. You didn’t really.’

‘I certainly did. Roses. Yellow ones.’

‘Sherlock! You can’t… that’s…’ John sputters, caught somewhere between giggles and alarm. ‘Mike is _married_ , for God’s sake! If he gets roses from another man then his wife is going to be–’

‘Oh, relax. Do you think I would be so stupid as to sign them from myself? The card indicates that they’re from a very grateful former patient, and they’re addressed to both him and his wife. Now are we _done_?’

One of Sherlock’s thighs is nudging between John’s and John is strongly tempted to say yes, because Sherlock is irresistible when he’s trying to request sex without actually saying anything.

But, just to be contrary, John catches at the hand that’s nudging at his pyjama bottoms and says, ‘So what do I get, if Mike is getting roses?’

He’s only teasing. He isn’t really expecting anything – even though there are two tickets tucked in his sock drawer to a violin concert by an obscure composer – and Sherlock’s whirlwind round of proposed activities is leaving him giddy with delight. But Sherlock stills, and says, ‘I’m glad you asked.’

He leans away, reaching over for something on the bedside table, and after a few seconds a small ball of paper lands on the pillow in front of John’s nose and rolls down to rest in the duvet.

‘I did some research on the Internet, and the general consensus seems to be that I should get you paper.’

John picks up the scrap and sees that it’s a tiny bird, folded with painstaking care. From the words John can glimpse along its wings and belly, the paper is taken from a police report and John hopes fervently that it’s a copy and not the original.

‘ _This_ year,’ Sherlock breathes, almost inaudible, and gently kisses the crown of John’s head.

John suddenly doesn’t want to go another instant without kissing Sherlock and so he rolls over, bird held loosely in a protective cage of fingers. He finds Sherlock watching him, curls in wild disarray and a complicated look in his eyes.

John kisses him, slowly and gently, trying to communicate how grateful he is to have met Sherlock, how much he loves him, and how much he wants to wake up like this every morning for the rest of his natural life.

Some of this obviously gets through because Sherlock is smiling when John pulls back, and smoothing a long thumb over the point of John’s shoulder beneath his T-shirt.

‘There’s a Japanese belief,’ Sherlock murmurs, staring intently at his thumb rubbing the soft, worn cotton against John’s skin, ‘that if you fold one thousand paper cranes, then the gods will grant you your heart’s desire.’

‘I see,’ John smiles, helplessly in love with the assorted bits of trivia that Sherlock has seen fit to store in his mind. ‘So will I find another nine hundred and ninety-nine waiting for me in the living room?’

‘No.’ Sherlock lifts his eyes and blinks at him, looking sweetly confused. ‘Why would I do that? It’s only for people who don’t already have it.’

John kisses him again, and decides not to mention the dream. Sherlock is warm and pliant against him, in a better mood than John has ever seen him, and will only grow scornful at the idea of dream visions or similar nonsense. And besides, since starting to help Sherlock with his work, then it’s not even close to being the strangest thing that John’s dreamt of.

 

\--End--


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